milliways_bar | (no subject)

Within a small, circular region of the hearth, surrounding the swimming hat, the flames suddenly gutter and go out. The hat continues to smolder. The smoke (and the smell) seems to be contained, though. It's as if someone put a glass hemisphere down right over the hat.

Two tables away, a man in dark clothes is frowning over the top of his glasses at the fireplace.

Edited 2015-09-13 21:21 (UTC)

Huh.

Fry picks up a poker and tries to poke the mystery hemisphere of nothingness...

It sure feels like there's a solid object there, too. Goes right down to the embers.

The man from two tables away has gotten to his feet and is approaching slowly, as adults do when they don't want to startle a child.

"Weird." Fry says quietly.

He puts the poker down and backs away slightly.

"Excuse me," says the man gently. "Were you trying to get rid of that?"

Fry jumps and looks around.

"Yes." he answers honestly, but sheepishly.

The man squats to be at Fry's eye level. His tone is calm and even, not angry at all.

"I'm sure you have a good reason," he says, "but the smoke from burning rubber doesn't just smell bad, it's toxic. That's why I stopped it."

"What's toxic mean?" Fry asks.

He doesn't quite make eye contact, but it's nothing personal.

(The man does not try to force eye contact.)

"Harmful to living things. If you breathed more than a little of that smoke it could damage your lungs.

"Poisonous might be a more familiar word? There's a technical difference but it's not important right now."

(afk ~1h dinner)

"Am I poisoned?" Fry asks, a little alarmed.

And then he starts to wonder if he poisoned anyone else...

"No, no, a few moments won't do any harm. But you could have been if I hadn't stopped the smoke from going everywhere. Or other people could have been."

"I'm sorry." Fry says quietly.

"I just can't wear it in the pool, it feels so bad."

"Many people do not like to wear those. Is someone insisting that you wear one?"

"Yes, the swimming teacher." Fry says. "It's the new rules for health and safety that you can't go in the pool without a hat but I went in the pool without a hat last year."

"If it's a health and safety rule, they probably won't want to make an exception."

The man puts the tip of one finger in his mouth and gnaws on it. He's thinking. (He wants a cigarette, really, but he's vowed to stop smoking indoors; besides, it would undermine the point about the burning rubber.)

"If you tried on a whole lot of different types of swimming hats, do you think you would find one that doesn't feel bad, or is it just hopeless?"

"I tried the cloth one, that was bad too." Fry says.

He looks irritated suddenly. "People don't get it. I'm autistic, not stubborn, I don't do it on purpose."

Tiny frown.

"I wish it were otherwise, but people are probably going to continue to not get it for the rest of your life. When you are an adult you will have more power to avoid those people, but I know that doesn't help now.

"So, if you can't stand to wear any hat, but you want to continue taking the swimming classes, you will either need to persuade the instructor to make an exception for you, or fool them into thinking you are wearing the hat when you aren't."

[OOC: Do Sasha's psychic powers have any chance of working in Fry's home universe? Also mun apologizes for possibly giving Fry terrible, terrible ideas.]

[ooc: Alas no to the psychic powers, but my all means yes to terrible ideas :).]

"My hair doesn't really look like a hat." Fry says doubtfully. "Maybe Mr Irons or Dad can fix it."

"Well..." Sasha says. He holds out his hands, and a Styrofoam bust, wearing a rough copy of the swim hat, fades into view as if he's holding it. "This is a visual illusion—it only appears to be here. I'm generating it with my mind. I could build a gadget that did the same thing, only on your head. But it probably wouldn't work in your world."

"Does your Dad know about this rule change, and does he, er, 'get it' about your autism?"

Fry jumps back, startled at the visual image.

"I think that might be hard to set up." he says, cautious at accepting gadgets from strangers with powers.

He nods. "Dad knows, he said he's going to write a letter."

Sasha makes the image fade away again slowly. "I'm sorry, I will be more careful about startling you from now on.

"It is good that your Dad is helping. Was the idea with throwing the hat in the fire, to get out of classes in the meantime?"

Fry nods.

"I thought if I put it in the bin someone could get it out again."

"You could have put it in the bin here."

Sasha thinks for a moment.

"Which is what we need to do with it now. Of course, first we have to take it out of the fire, take it outdoors and let the smoke escape, and make sure it's completely extinguished.

"I'm sure your parents have told you, if you make a mess, you need to clean it up. I'm going to use telekinesis to get the hat out of the fire and outside safely. I want you to get a bucket of cold water from the Bar and meet me by the back door."

"Dad comes here." Fry says, having difficulty generally with distinguishing what he knows from what other people might know.

He goes to the bar and gets a bucket of water, but not being very big, it's the size of a sandcastle bucket.

Fry may or may not be back in time to see the hat, and the mysterious dome covering it, float slowly up into the air and follow Sasha to the back door. When out of the fireplace the dome is revealed to be a full sphere, and it brings a glob of ashes and embers with it. Sasha waits right outside the back door for Fry.

"By the time your father found out about it, they'd probably have emptied the bins," he says. "But your plan wasn't a bad one, except for the smoke."

"Now what we're going to do with this is put it down on that sandy patch over there, where it won't hurt the plants and the smoke won't blow back into the building. I'll let the smoke out, and after a few moments you pour the water over the hat and embers."

Fry nods and follows him, holding the bucket.

He doesn't seem fazed by the fact that Sasha has managed to get it out here; it was just the initial surprise that startled him.

"Okay."

"Take care not to let the smoke blow in your face." Sasha moves to upwind of the sandy patch, and when Fry is there too, he drops the telekinetic barrier around the hat.

Unfortunately, the contents of the sphere are still hot enough that they re-ignite the moment they get some oxygen again. There is a modestly loud "whoomph" noise, and the sphere turns briefly into a ball of flame and then a pillar of black smoke with angry flames at the bottom.

"... I should have anticipated that," Sasha says, only a little startled. "That bucket's not going to be enough, do you see a hose anywhere around here?" He's looking around for one himself.

Fry drops the bucket, backs away, and starts screaming.

Well, shit. Sasha should have anticipated that, too.

...Sasha has spotted a hose, and ignores Fry for the moment in favor of putting the fire out. Once that's dealt with he makes himself quiet and unthreatening and waits to see if Fry will calm down on his own.

ooc: Sasha is a research psychologist, and he's had special-needs education training. He ought to know exactly how to react to an autistic child having a panic attack. The mun, alas, has no such background and is guessing based on questionably reliable Internet sources. Please tell me if I've fucked up.

[ooc: Nope, that's pretty much it :)]

Seeing that the fire is out, the screaming gradually calms down in favour of lots of hand flapping and pacing around.

"Big fire!"

"Big fire," Sasha agrees. "I really should have remembered that could happen. Everything inside the bubble was still hot, and only not burning because it ran out of air."

"Would it have burned up the bar?" Fry asks.

"If that had happened inside? It might have started other things on fire, but there are automatic sprinklers that would spray water on the fire and put it out. I can show you how to look for them."

Sasha takes the bucket and scrapes all the muck into it. (With his hands.)

"... I've just realized I haven't asked you your name, or told you mine. I'm Sasha Nein."

"My name is Alexander Jefry Sandhu but I like to be called Fry." Fry says, staring at the muck.

Sasha nods. "You can call me Sasha, Fry."

The muck is mostly ashes from whatever the fireplace is normally fueled with. (Wood? Coal? Who can say, in a place like this.) There is a globby thing that is probably what's left of the hat. There's also quite a bit of regular old dirt and mud. Sasha is being thorough.

"I'm not sure what to do with all this," he admits, "but we shouldn't just leave it here, it'd be bad for the plants. Maybe Bar can get rid of it for us."

There is a hazmat disposal service back at the base, but it's not really meant for something this minor. Also, paperwork.

"Can it go in the compost?"

"No, rubber can't go in the compost. Let's see what Bar says."

Sasha straightens up and starts carrying the bucket back toward the main building.

Fry follows him.

[ooc: Fade here? Thanks for the thread!]

[ooc: Yes, this seems like a good fade-out point. Thank you!]